The transition team for President-elect Donald Trump is reviewing a draft executive order that would establish a “warrior board” of former generals and non-commissioned officers with the power to review three- and four-star officers and recommend their removal, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The order takes direct aim at “woke generals” that Trump has vowed to remove from the military ranks, according to the report.
Officially, the order, should Trump sign it, would fast-track the removal of generals and admirals who are found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to the Journal, citing a draft of the order.
The draft order originated with an outside policy group working with Trump’s transition team, according to the report.
“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver,” Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, told the Journal.
Trump has already stated that any general who had a role in the United States’ military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 that led to the deaths of 13 U.S. service members in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport will be asked to resign by “noon on Inauguration Day.”
Speculation has also centered on Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown, also Chief of Staff of the Air Force, who has been a staunch supporter of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives (DEI).
“There is some anxiety. I think they are immediately worried,” a Defense Department official recently said of Brown’s team.
Whomever Trump picks for Defense Secretary would impact whether he signs or amends the order, according to the report. The secretary would also have a role in Trump’s reform of the joint staff, which has “gotten way too big,” a transition source told the Journal.
The draft order cites Gen. George Marshall’s creation of a “plucking board” in 1940 that used retired officers to review files of active military officers and “remove from line promotion any officer for reasons deemed good and sufficient,” the Journal reported.
“We’ve had a total failure of leadership at all appointed levels and to a smaller extent and at the uniformed level in some areas,” Rep. Jack Bergman, a retired U.S. Marine Corps three-star general who won reelection to Congress this past week, told Newsmax on Saturday. “But I think that’s going to sort itself out naturally here in the next year or two, but it’s going to start to happen quickly after Jan. 20.”
